Disentangling the Impact of Instructor Mindset and Demeanor on Student Experiences

Students are more motivated and have better college experiences with instructors who express that ability can grow and improve (a growth mindset), compared with instructors who express that ability is fixed and unchangeable (a fixed mindset). Students also have better experiences with warm and friendly instructors, compared to cold and unfriendly instructors. Instructor mindset beliefs (i.e., what information instructors express to students about the nature of ability) and instructor demeanor (i.e., how that information is expressed) have been confounded in previous research. Although these two factors are conceptually distinct, there is often an overlap between them, such that it is unclear if students are responding to an instructor's apparent mindset beliefs, or the warm demeanor with which the instructor conveys those beliefs. In this study, we manipulated instructor mindset and demeanor using a fully-crossed 2 (Warm vs. Cold) x 2 (Growth vs. Fixed) Design. We found that while students respond best to a combination of a warm demeanor and a growth mindset, a growth mindset is always preferable to a fixed mindset, for warm instructors and cold instructors alike. This means that the positive effects of an instructors' growth mindset are not entirely driven by being warm and friendly, as some may have assumed, given how confounded these constructs are in the field. Instead, the growth mindset message had a persistent positive effect on students, even when the delivery was cold.